Lie to Me (27 page)

So I didn’t feel great about all of that. Marcus, though, Marcus…when he walked out into that ring, quiet, the way he was, calm, totally confident, it felt different, for me. He looked at me and the look in his eyes…

Looking back, now I know what that look was. It was that same animal thing that happens when he’s about to take me. The way he looks when we fuck, before we make love.

Back then? I wouldn’t have known how to describe that look in those terms, but I knew vaguely what it meant. I knew it wasn’t the kind of look a man gave a friend.

Or a little sister.

And I recognized my reaction. Purely physical. Purely carnal. I remember thinking it was getting harder and harder to remember to think only about what Marcus needed rather than what I wanted as those desires burned hotter and brighter. By the time they rang the bell I could have lit up that entire smoke filled room myself.

Everything else fell away except for Marcus.

The shouts of the people in the crowd, the smell of cigars and cigarettes and beer, the flashes of light as people took pictures—all of it muted while I picked up every little twitch of muscle in Marcus’s chest, every bead of sweat on his brow, every movement of his eyes.

He looked at me again. And I don’t know how, but it felt like he was just as conscious of me. Like whatever it was that tied us to each other, that way we were aware of each other, read each other, felt each other—it was just extra strong, like a sixth sense, drowning out all the noise around it.

I’ve never seen him fight like that.

Marcus was always a smart fighter, always totally unhurried, controlled. He’d play with his opponents a little, rope them in, see what they had, and then move in for a lethal blow. He had a lot of knock-outs, but all of them were technically proficient and beautiful to watch.

This was beautiful, too, but in a different way. Almost a frightening way. An animal way.

The bell rang and Marcus unleashed. He charged. Before anyone knew what had happened Marcus landed four, five, six punches, sending the ogre back on his heels and putting his hands up blindly. The big, possibly racist ogre got in a few swings, just desperate, unseeing punches that Marcus easily danced around. Then Marcus just hunted him around the ring, his eyes on fire, his body working in this terrible harmony, muscles flexing, contracting, releasing with explosive power.

The ogre tried to cheat in a way. I mean, in illegal fights there aren’t a whole lot of rules, but generally you’re not supposed to try to knee a guy in the balls. Bad form.

Which is why the crowd cheered when Marcus blocked the knee, knocked the ogre flat on his back, and then sat on his chest for a classic ground and pound.

The ref called it, tapped on Marcus’s shoulder, and tried to haul him off the ogre. But Marcus wouldn’t move. He stopped punching, his hands covered in blood, but he wouldn’t let the man up, just hulking over him with sweat shining on the planes of his chest, his abs, his obliques, as he leaned over this much larger man that he’d just completely decimated.

I remember the ref actually trying to physically dislodge Marcus, and it was like watching a child try to push over a tree. I’m not sure Marcus even noticed.

Instead he reached down and ripped that armband right off the ogre’s arm.

So when Marcus finally stood up, leaning back into the light, his chest heaving, he had that red armband in his hand. His eyes found me, like he knew where I’d been all along, like he didn’t see anything else. And then he cut across that ring, pushing people aside until he got to me, and wordlessly offered it to me.

It was ridiculous. And it absolutely killed me.

I remember every detail of that. Every line in his striated shoulders, every shadow playing across his pecs, every drop of sweat and smear of blood on his skin. The exact shade of his gray-green eyes in that light, the way they burned through me, the way they saw nothing else.

I’m pretty sure that was the exact moment I stopped being able to think clearly around him. I’m not sure I ever started again.

He drove us back to his family’s apartment, silent, brooding, and it wasn’t until we got upstairs to that dark, empty place where he was now living all by himself that he told me what had happened with Alex Wolfe. There was still that tension, that sexual charge between us, that primal thing. It didn’t go away. But Marcus told me that he’d found out Juan Roma wasn’t his real father, and everything that meant for him, how it all came together, and it added to what we felt. It gave it depth.

When he let me in like that, told me how it all finally made sense to him, it somehow made me want him even more. I didn’t just want him physically, I wanted to love him to the best of my ability. I’d never felt closer to anyone. I don’t think I ever will, either.

It’s always been Marcus.

I remember him sitting on his bed, saying, “That’s why they hated me. It wasn’t anything I did. It was never anything I did.” Like it was this revelation, like he’d truly believed it was his fault, and I remember my heart breaking for him. I remember walking over to him, not being able to stand any distance between us any longer, and putting my hand through his hair until he looked up at me. I remember the expression of wonder on his face, eyes open, almost childlike. I remember pushing him back on his bed, just wanting to feel him, to hold him the way he’d held me so many times.

I remember saying, “Lie to me. Tell me you’re ok.”

“I don’t have to lie,” he said. “I have you.”

And then he kissed me, and everything changed.

I felt…God. It felt like this door was opening to an entire world that I’d never seen before, and the ways of feeling, of being, that had been closed off to me now washed over me. All the ways I could love him flowed through me at once and it was overwhelming. I think I wanted all of him, right away, wanted to show him what had been building inside me for the past two years and change, wanted to show him every single thing I’d felt, every single thing that had made me love him.

Because I knew, even then. I knew I loved him. I knew it was special. I knew there would never be anyone else like him.

And I knew he felt it, too.

The way he kissed me, it was almost too much. Too sweet, too powerful, too charged. There was a part of me that shied away from it, like the first time I almost made myself come, and that feeling that came over me suddenly was so powerful that it frightened me. But Marcus made me brave. There were years of emotion distilled into that kiss, and it branded me for life.

We didn’t go much further than that that night. We just kissed for hours and held each other close. We talked. We were both frightened of it, we both laughed at how long it had taken, we both couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

And the way he kissed me just now, in the freaking parking lot of Dill’s camp, it was like that. Full of promise. Full of everything Marcus has to offer me, good and bad. Full of our history together.

Full of lust, too.

So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself for feeling unsteady on my feet as Marcus leads me into the mess hall, where all the parents are having juice and cookies or something while finding their kids. I won’t be too hard on myself, but I have to be careful.

And not just for myself, and not just for Dill.

Because now, as I watch Dill give Marcus a high five, and the two of them start talking about video games like old friends (I got a hug, barely, in the way of eleven-year-old boys), I realize that maybe I should have been more careful for Marcus, too.

Maybe I should be thinking more about what it might have been like for Marcus, who’d been looking for a father his entire life, to have Alex Wolfe show up and claim him as a son. And what it might have been like to have Alex Wolfe ask him to come join his company, even if that meant being far away from me.

“Lo, come on, I wanna show Marcus the game!”

Dill’s already scampering away, and Marcus puts his hand on the small of my back, guiding me through the mess of parents. We follow Dill to one of the computer labs and I’m grateful that Dill doesn’t need much from me, because I am almost on another planet.

Watching the two of them.

Watching them tease each other, make each other laugh.

I realize I would kill for Dill to have another parent-type presence in his life. Maybe part of that is because I’m always afraid that I have no idea what I’m doing, that I am royally screwing it up and screwing Dill over in the process and I don’t even know it. I mean, I’m making this up as I go along. Some people rock being single parents, or big sisters, or whatever, but I’m not sure I’m one of them. I constantly feel overwhelmed, even if I know that it’s better for Dill to be with me, who loves him more than anything, than an aunt who only barely tolerates him. But it’s not just that. I want Dill to think the whole world loves him, not just me. I want him to grow up knowing he’s important to more than just me.

I realize how important that could be for him, and for the first time I really feel what the absence of that must have done to Marcus. I see it in how attentive he is with Dill, how he puts so much effort into this small interaction, how he treats Dill’s every rambling, over-excited conversational offshoot like it’s the most important thing anyone’s ever said to him. How it all makes Dill shine even brighter than he usually does.

I want to say, “Lie to me. Tell me this isn’t perfect.”

And I wonder if Alex Wolfe promised Marcus something like this just by showing up and saying, “You’re my son.” I wonder if that was something that Marcus needed. Something I shouldn’t begrudge him, even if he should have told me, if that’s why he needed to leave.

I wonder if Marcus needed that more than he needed me. And it hurts.

God, does it hurt.

And it hurts to know that I’m really that selfish.

But I suck it up and do my best to join Dill and Marcus, who are already totally engrossed in Dill’s game. Pretty soon I am, too, because Dill has punched it up a lot in a short time. Genius Boy has added some new puzzles to a few of the levels and is talking nonstop about commissioning artwork—oh God, how am I going to pay for that?—and having me do more music, and his excitement is absolutely infectious.

Marcus is smiling ear to ear. And I can tell when he looks at me that I must be, too.

“You are the most amazing kid,” I say to Dill, punching him in the arm.

“I know.” Dill shrugs, smiling, like he doesn’t care. But he lets me ruffle his hair and kind of leans into me, and when we’re about to leave he gives me this fierce little hug and says, “Thank you.”

“This is what big sisters do,” I say into the top of his head, and ruffle his hair again. I wonder what I’ll do when he’s bigger than me and I can’t ruffle his hair or give him gentle noogies. The thought puts my stomach in knots.

And then the clever little man looks up at me, smiling. He says, “I like Marcus, Lo.”

Seriously, what am I supposed to say to that? There’s probably an appropriate response in some parenting handbook somewhere, but I’m pretty sure that, whatever it is, it’s not getting flustered because your little brother is more perceptive than you gave him credit for.

I finally settle on this: “Me, too.”

“So we’ll hang out some more when I get home?”

Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. This exactly what I don’t know how to handle. So I flub it.

“Maybe,” I say. “We’ll see.”

Thank God Dill is already on to other things. I can see his mind whirling around in there, probably thinking up other games he wants to make or stories he wants to tell.

“Ok,” Dill says, already with that faraway look in his eyes. “I love you, Lo.”

He’s already off running to join a bunch of other little boys as I shout after him, “I love you, too, little man!”

Dill shoots me this horrified look over his shoulder, and Marcus laughs, walking back over to me. He was off talking to the camp director about I don’t know what, giving me some time with Dill. Now he’s shaking his head.

“Oh man, he is going to get it for that,” Marcus says.

I cringe. He’s right. I just made a serious mom-type mistake. I kind of can’t believe I called Dill “little man” in front of all his new camp friends.

“Bad?” I ask.

Marcus is still smiling at me as we walk out to the parking lot, but now he shakes his head. “He’s a tough kid. He’ll be fine. Also, I call shotgun.”

“Marcus, it’s just the two of us. Where else were you going to sit, in the back?”

“I called shotgun for
you
. I have to drive this car, Lo.”

I laugh, looking at his suddenly intense face, and then throw him the keys. Let the alpha male do whatever he needs to do with the car. I’m probably going to enjoy watching him drive it anyway.

And I do.

A lot.

But I also feel kind of pensive, thinking about all the stuff I saw between Marcus and Dill and the way it made me feel. The way it made me reevaluate how Marcus left. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s an excuse for just up and leaving one night and sending me a freaking text message saying he’s gone, then refusing to explain why. Even thinking about it now makes me angry, so I try to let it go, because, well, I’m already in deep.

But maybe he had a reason to leave.

Maybe he needed something I couldn’t give him.

Maybe I wasn’t enough family for him, even if he was enough for me.

“Baby, I need you to put those legs down,” Marcus eventually says.

We’re only about twenty minutes from home and I’ve been riding with my legs propped up on the dashboard because it’s my car and it’s comfortable, damn it. But they are my bare legs, and I am wearing a skirt. I grin.

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“If you don’t want me to pull over and drag you into the backseat, I need you to put those legs down,” he says. His voice is icy calm, which, for some reason, combined with the words he’s saying to me, really does it for me.

Unfortunately, we’re not on some isolated highway. There’s other cars, people everywhere.

“I’m comfortable,” I say. “And there are cops in speed traps all along this stretch.”